America the Beautiful

The beauty, joy and hope that is America is expressed in many ways and places

across the nation year round, especially during the holiday season starting with

Thanksgiving. One event in particular, the Christmas tree-lighting at New York’s

Rockefeller Center, which attracts thousands of tourists, not only from all over

America, but the world, is “an iconic event” in the words of Scott Kirton, 35, who

came from England to see the 75-year-old 74-foot Norway spruce adorned with

30,000 lights be lit on November 30, 2011.

I was there to watch the ceremony from the 29th

of investment banking firm Morgan Keegan. Mingling with investment bankers,

lawyers and their corporate clients, discussing the dire straits America is in, as I

sipped on delightful French wines and ate delicious food, knowing America, China

and the world were on the verge of imploding financially because of the lack of

the necessary financial nutrients, was a wake-up call for how resilient America is,

no matter how down and out it is. Looking out the window at the scurrying masses

below, I decided to go and join them to experience their heartfelt uplifting mood and

outlook.

It turned out to be a nightmare. President Obama had decided to come to town to

attend three fundraisers, one not too far from the lighting ceremony. It made New

York City’s normal gridlock look good. The gridlock the president created was

enough to make Congress envious.

What a metaphor, I thought. That is what America is all about. Organized political

chaos that somehow finds its beacon of hope and its entrepreneurial spirit gets

rekindled and refocused by We the People that re-energizes the Republic and the

world, something that is long overdue and has to start again with the known knowns

and unknown unknowns, domestically and with China as its global partner.

Thanksgiving is an immigrant’s holiday, and since all Americans are either

immigrants or descendants of immigrants, the concept of everyone celebrating their

cultural family traditions and eating and being thankful as immigrants, is based on

the legend that the settlers of the Plymouth colony, in desperate gratitude to God for

their first good harvest, gave thanks to the Lord and the natives. The previous winter,

they had lost nearly half their number to starvation, illness and attacks. A successful

harvest, along with the peaceful participation of the Wampanoag Indians in the feast,

meant that from that point on the Pilgrims might endure.

But history tells us that the Plymouth settlers, when sure of a good harvest – and

good defenses – repaid their native hosts with mistrust, disease and war. It’s hard to

survive, even harder to stop behaving like a survivor. One of the great human virtues

is gratitude, a virtue we must remind ourselves this Thanksgiving – and practice all

year.